Langley Fox on Her Multiple Fashion Week Collaborations and What She Has in Common with Her Great-Grandfather, Ernest Hemingway

The idea of running barefoot through fields of sunny daisy-sprigged meadows is about as far removed from the current icy, slushy mess on the streets of New York Fashion Week as you can get, but if Langley Fox’s illustrations are anything to go by, then it doesn’t hurt to dream. “It’s funny, because daisies are actually my favorite flower,” she says of the dainty blossom that Marc Jacobs named a fragrance after. The artist and model has created a series of ten ethereal drawings inspired by the flower for the designer’s new tweet pop-up shop in New York, which opened last night. It’s part of a string of fashion collaborations that Langley has worked on recently: She flew in from Los Angeles last week to help launch the bags she designed with Roman design duo TL-180. Before that, a fantastic collection of illustrated scenes from Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast for Louis Vuitton. “It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done,” says Langley, the great-granddaughter of the celebrated author. “I don’t claim to be an expert, I just wanted them to level up to something that could comparably be in his book.”

Her photorealist graphite drawings certainly evoke the spirit of Hemingway’s era and the fascinating characters that filled his novels. Langley’s father gave her the original manuscript for inspiration, and, retracing the handwritten pages, she brought the story to life. For the record, it just so happens to be her favorite Hemingway book, too. “You really get a sense of this life before he was famous,” she says. “His hunger to succeed and his lust for life.” And while she’s reluctant to draw any artistic parallels, she will say that her great-grandfather shared her love of cats.

As the sister of Dree Hemingway and daughter of model Mariel Hemingway, she’s certainly got a bit of fashion in her blood. As she tells it, though, her own style has little in common with the glamorous ’70s Halston dresses that she saw hung in her mother’s closet. “I got voted Most Unique Style in middle school,” she says. “But I don’t think it was supposed to be a compliment!” Her look then—mismatched striped socks and a Superman shirt with a cape on it—is quite different to the way she dresses now, although once in a while she likes to throw something unexpected into the mix of her cool Los Angles wardrobe. Walking the runway of Marc Jacobs’s show last season dressed in Hawaiian board shorts, slip-ons, and a blonde wig was an exhilarating, if nerve-racking, opportunity for her to switch up her style. “It was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone,” she says. “I’m much more comfortable talking about art than modeling.” She needn’t worry on either count: Her delicate, fantasy-tinged pictures speak for themselves.